Round Our Way

Highbridge has had it's new roundabout for a week or so now. The contractors could be seen last week working well into the evenings to finish the road markings and segregated cycle facilities. Finally, only a little over a month late, the new road alignment opened to traffic. Almost immediately it caused problems. The long straggling queue of holiday traffic refused to acknowledge it, and ploughed endlessly forward. These people are habitual holidaymakers who perform this exodus to the southwest every year. They cannot countenance a change in the layout and drive ahead regardless. A few mount the kerb of the circle, or scrape the barriers in their attempt to retread the same ground as last summer.

The roundabout doesn't work - the volume of traffic on the north-south axis won't allow it to function as designed. Maybe in a few weeks time when the holidaymakers have gone home traffic will flow gracefully around the network again, but it's clear that for whole months of the year we will experience delays just like before. Once again a major developer is allowed to butcher the fragile infrastructure of Highbridge in the pursuit of profit, with no thought for how the town can continue to work.

Meanwhile, work on the superstore continues apace. The great white hulk is barely visible from the road, behind the houses and tucked in next to the waste transfer station. From the railway however, a low brick wall forms the boundary of the site and the extent of the building can be seen more clearly. For now at least, Springfield Road has disappeared. A strip of tarmac, now a contractors' car park, exits oddly onto the throat of the new roundabout. The area is a no-mans-land for pedestrians, and an appearance with a camera is now greeted with outright hostility.